Covers all 4 volumes of THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE! by Yoko Nogiri THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE! is a lot cuter and more innocent than its title suggests. Four hot boys can shapeshift into animals in a story that's a much lighter and faster FRUITS BASKET. Sara Linsley, the letterer of the series, explains what exactly a letterer does in manga, and why she loves working on Yoko Nogiri's series so much. Discussion topics include: Who is best boy (of course!), how cool Komugi is (so cool), and how actually, wolves are way bigger than that.
Covers all 4 volumes of That Wolf-Boy is Mine! by Yoko Nogiri
That Wolf-Boy is Mine! is a lot cuter and more innocent than its title suggests. Four hot boys can shapeshift into animals in a story that's a much lighter and faster FRUITS BASKET. Sara Linsley, the letterer of the series, explains what exactly a letterer does in manga, and why she loves working on Yoko Nogiri's series so much. Discussion topics include: Who is best boy (of course!), how cool Komugi is (so cool), and how actually, wolves are way bigger than that.
Click here for a transcript of this episode.
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Next episode will cover volumes 1-7 of Ao Haru Ride by Io Sakisaka.
[Intro Music 0:00-0:20]
ASHLEY: Welcome to Shojo and Tell, where we discuss shojo manga and tell who’s hot and who’s not, talk about themes, and just generally geek out. Today, March 14, 2020, we’ll be shojo and telling about the series THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE! by Yoko Nogiri. I’m your host Ashley McDonnell, and I’m joined by the letterer of the series, Sara Linsley. Hello, Sara!
SARA: Hi, Ashley.
ASHLEY: Sara, who are you? I mean, I kind of gave it away, but you can elaborate [laughs].
SARA: Yeah, so I’m a freelance letterer for Kodansha Comics and Viz. I’ve worked on a bunch of series, because I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve worked on WAITING FOR SPRING—
ASHLEY: Yassss.
SARA: LOVE IN FOCUS, LDK, LOVE ME, LOVE ME NOT — that just came out recently, it’s really, really good. Yeah, I’ve worked on lots of shojo. I’ve also been a software engineer for three years, so, if you follow me on Twitter, that’s, that’s why I talk about software so much. [laughs]
ASHLEY: I know, actually I really love your Twitter, because I also work in tech, but I’m not in a technical role, so I’m like wow, Sara does, does it all! [both laugh]
SARA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: I do especially love your tweets about what, exactly, a letterer does, but perhaps you can also elaborate on that a little bit in words.
SARA: Yeah, I feel like people don’t really understand what lettering is. But think about just your basic comic book, right?
ASHLEY: Mmhmm.
SARA: There’s the writer who writes the script, there’s the artist who draws the art. Now, how do those words get on the page? It’s a third person, that’s the letterer, that’s what we do. So in Western comics, it’s a little bit different. They actually get to make their own, like, bubbles, whereas we just use whatever the artist used in Japan.
ASHLEY: Ah.
SARA: So there are some differences. We also do the sound effects. But it depends on the publisher, because some sound effects, you have to completely remove, like with Viz. But then Kodansha, you have to like, make it look like the original, but off to the side.
ASHLEY: Oh, very fun.
SARA: Yeah. And I think Yen Press it’s like, it’s the dialogue font, but like, off to the side, so, there’s a lot of differences.
ASHLEY: Yeah, definitely. The push towards not removing the sound effects, but just translating them, I was like, I guess that’s better? Cuz replacing them sounds much harder.
SARA: Yeah. [both laugh] I’m actually working on FUSHIGI YUGI, the like, new spinoff, BYAKKO SENKI.
ASHLEY: Ahhhhh, yes!
SARA: Yes, it’s—I feel so honored to work on it. And, like, honestly, whenever I’m retouching it, I’m like, {revertant voice} “I’m retouching Yuu Watase’s art!”
ASHLEY: I mean, yes, that’s an appropriate feeling, I think.
SARA: Yeah, it’s really humbling. Ummm, I forgot what we were talking about.
ASHLEY: [laughs] oh, just replacing the sound effects is much harder.
SARA: Yeah! So on FUSHIGI YUGI: BYAKKO SENKI, I have to replace all of the sound effects completely. So that means that I have to take all the Japanese off, and then I put my sound effects on top of it, and then I try to like, redraw the places that—just like, fill in the gaps.
ASHLEY: [fervently] NO! [laughs]
SARA: So if you ever watch those YouTube videos where like, people are restoring art—
ASHLEY: Mmhmm
SARA: I watch a lot of them, you’d just like, Google “restoring art videos”
ASHLEY: Oh, okay.
SARA: You have to, like, try to patch in these holes, but you don’t want to like, add anything, because you want to maintain the like, integrity of the art.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: But you do want to, like, make it seem like that hole wasn’t there before, which is really fun.
ASHLEY: Yeah, this is actually a question that my partner had had when I told him about you, and he was like, is it easier in the digital age? Like, do you get stuff with layered files or anything in Photoshop?
SARA: [laughs]
ASHLEY: And I was like, I don’t think so? But maybe?
SARA: So I’ve only worked with Kodansha and Viz, so I can only talk about my own experience, and I’ve heard a lot of different things. But what I get is what the artist actually scanned. So it has the balloons with no text inside. But all of the asides — so like, the small text —
ASHLEY: Mmhmm.
SARA: There’s a lot of them in WOLF-BOY — all of those little asides — those, I do have to retouch off. But, yeah.
ASHLEY: OK, so not, not as easy as it could be, I guess, yet, in the digital age.
SARA: I think Brandon Bovia talked about this, because he just recently did TRANSFORMERS, which is a really old series, so, the art — the files that he got were in a completely different, like, state than he was used to, so, it really depends on the series.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, newer things are easier. OK, so, obviously you heard about WOLF-BOY from working on it, I presume.
SARA: Yeah. [laughs]
ASHLEY: When you’re working on it, is it actually like reading it, or do you go back and then read it all the way through and then…?
SARA: Well, I can’t read Japanese, so I do—I will go over the art—I get the Japanese tankobon, so I go over it and that’s how I decide, like, which fonts I’m going to use. But, yeah, I don’t really read it until I letter it.
ASHLEY: [laughs] OK.
SARA: Although sometimes I’m like, “I have to read ahead on this script, I have to know what happens next, I can’t wait until I’m done lettering it!”
ASHLEY: Yeah, I’m like, do you read it like five different times? Cuz you’re like, “OK, I looked at it once in Japanese. I put in the letters. Then I have to see the final product”—so that’s three times.
SARA: Yeah, probably like, five by the time I’m done with it, which is why proofreaders are so important. Because by the fifth time, I’m like, I’m not reading for—
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: —grammar or anything, I’m just, yeah.
ASHLEY: That makes sense. OK, so you’re intimately familiar with what WOLF-BOY is about, so can you explain to listeners who may not have heard of it before?
SARA: Sure! So the main character’s name is Komugi, and she moves to Hokkaido after a traumatic experience with her old classmates. And at her new school, she meets this boy named Yuu, who can shape-shift into a wolf—[mischievous] or is he a wolf who can shape-shift into a boy?
ASHLEY: it’s definitely the latter [laughs]
SARA: Yeah [laughs]. He’s not the only one, and as Komugi quickly finds out, there’s a whole group of boys at her school with the same power. And now she knows their secret!
ASHLEY: Uhhh, yeah, and they’re hot, obviously.
SARA: Heck yeah!
ASHLEY: So everyone wants to be in on their secret, too, but, you know, they’re not prepared for that level of secret. [both laugh] Yeah, so I have only come to know [Yoko] Nogiri very recently, because again, somebody just like, randomly gave me LOVE IN FOCUS, and was like, “you should read this, it’s cute!” and I was like “OK!”—which is Nogiri’s other series— and I was like “It was cute!”
SARA: Yeah!
ASHLEY: So I was like, “Yeah! Now I want to read THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE!” Because honestly, every time I heard about THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE, I was like, “is that some raunchy, like, werewolf story?” Like, I don’t know, what’s going on? But it’s not! No! It’s not that.
SARA: I mean, if you want something like that, I think KIMI WA PET is more like that—although there’s no actual magic. But it’s like, it’s a josei. Yeah, um, I heard about WOLF-BOY, yeah, from working on it. My editor, Haruko Hashimoto, actually, after I’d done WOLF-BOY, she was like, “do you want to do another Yoko Nogiri series?” And I was like, “heck yeah, I do!” So that’s how I also worked on LOVE IN FOCUS.
ASHLEY: So what is your favorite aspect of WOLF-BOY and like, Nogiri’s art in general?
SARA: I love the hair? Can I say that?
ASHLEY: [laughs] Yeah.
SARA: I just—I love the like, giant Ghibli hair, like, how does she get that much volume with her hair? I love the art, specifically, I also love the plotline. It’s just really fun.
ASHLEY: It’s really fun, yeah. I think what I’m appreciating is that like, you know, yeah, I just read all of BASARA, which is this big, epic fantasy series, and it’s old, and I’m like, “alright, you know, this series was great, but”— you know, even my partner, when I was reading it and he would like, look over my shoulder sometimes, he was like, “what is happening from panel to panel in BASARA?” Like, it was so confusing, there’s so much going on, there’s no connection between anything. And then I’m like, “Nogiri is such a good, like, palette cleanser for that.” Like, the art is simple, but she’s also really, really highly aware of how she like, places things.
SARA: Mmhmm, yeah.
ASHLEY: And I’m like, “OK, this is so nice. I’m so here for it.”
SARA: Yeah, the composition of the panels is so elegant, right? She doesn’t add too much background, she doesn’t add too little. She does a really good job of balancing, I think, the amount of art she puts in each panel.
ASHLEY: Yeah. Like, the amount of—the minimalism still leaves such a like, a great impact, and I’m like oh, that’s actually much harder to do that to clutter the pages like in BASARA or my favorite manga is still MAID-SAMA, so like—and that thing is a mess! [both laugh] Such a mess. So then I’m like, Nogiri, so good! I do love that she portrays herself as a tomato. Very unique author profile sketches there.
SARA: Yeah, I love that. I love seeing how artists draw themselves, that’s my favorite part at the end of every manga, is seeing the like, author auto-portrait—what’s that word? When you draw yourself? Not autobiography, the other one.
ASHLEY: Oh, self-portrait?
SARA: Self-portrait! There we are!
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: yeah, I love seeing how they draw themselves.
ASHLEY: yeah, so, WOLF-BOY came before LOVE IN FOCUS, right? No?
SARA: I just know I lettered it before.
ASHLEY: Okay, I’m pretty sure WOLF-BOY came before LOVE IN FOCUS. [both laugh]
SARA: I think so, yeah.
ASHLEY: I do have to say that overall I thought LOVE IN FOCUS was like, a tighter short series, overall.
SARA: Right, yeah. I think that’s because WOLF-BOY was only supposed to be one volume. She mentioned that at the end of volume four, she said, “I wasn’t expecting there to be four, but, I’m happy there were.”
ASHLEY: Yeah, she’s like, [goofy voice] “So I just made up a bunch of other stuff—this evil bad guy over here, I dunno!” [both laugh] Like, what? Okay.
SARA: Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s cool to see here progress as a storyteller.
ASHLEY: Yeah, that’s why I was like, well it would make sense if WOLF-BOY was the first one and LOVE IN FOCUS was the second one. She’s like, “alright, I understand now how to plot a short series in a tighter time frame but land all the things still.” I mean I still think there were too many, like maybe one too many characters in LOVE IN FOCUS too. Like in WOLF-BOY, yeah, I was definitely like, why are there four of them? I don’t need four people who can turn—five if you include the teacher. And I was like, I don’t need Aoshi, like he can leave. Or Senri, really, but at least he got a cool side story (laughs).
SARA: Yes! That was really cute.
ASHLEY: Yeah, so overall I just think it’s a very cute series. You compared it—and I don’t want to go too far into like, spoilers, but—it’s gotten comparisons to FRUITS BASKET if FRUITS BASKET was not, you know, 23 volumes long.
SARA: Right, yeah. I feel like it’s much more accessible because it’s only four volumes.
ASHLEY: Yeah, but it definitely—it’s like oh I see all the comparisons, right? But they just don’t land as well in the condensed time frame, like, alright, I don’t know, this took a heel-turn somewhere around here, like, that’s cool. [both laugh] But yeah, overall it was very cute, I think it does, it has a modern shojo sensibility, where it’s like, “you know all those older shojo tropes that we grew up on? Let’s just tear them down.” Which we’ll get more into, but it’s just like, “forget those. Those are nonsense.” So I definitely recommend people, you know, read it if they’re looking for like a short, cute series to read. And it is published digitally and physically from Kodansha Comics. I know everybody gets mad all the time about like, the digital-only or digital-first releases. Calm down, everybody! You can get it physically!
SARA: I’ve got opinions on that, too, but they’re probably a little different. [both laughs] That’s a separate podcast.
ASHLEY: That’s true. You could just have a whole podcast about digital, like, like, common fights on the Internet among manga collectors, and people who read manga. Which I’m like, no! I don’t want! [laughs] But in general it is good to, you know, support your favorite creators and the work that localizers have to do for it, so.
SARA: Yeah, we do a lot of really hard work. I guess I should probably mention that the translator, Alethea and Athena Nibley, they did an amazing job on this, and so did my editor, Haruko Hashimoto, and so did the logo designer, Phil Balsman.
ASHLEY: Yeahhhh.
SARA: Kinda like a dream team of shojo manga.
ASHLEY: A dream team of shojo manga! Oh man, that’s nice. Okay, yeah—I mean— to lean into the debate a little more, I just get annoyed when people are like, “why would I pay almost the same amount of money for a digital release as a physical release?” and I’m like, “well, the same amount of work went into it, it’s just, like, the printing and the shipping don’t cost as much as the labor that people had to do to translate it and letter it and all these other things.” It’s the same, you know? Somebody had to draw it.
SARA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: Like, most of the work is in that.
SARA: I had like a whole Twitter rant on how, like, localized manga is worth more to you as somebody who can’t read Japanese.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: And that’s added value that localizers put, like, that’s what you’re partially paying for, and yeah.
ASHLEY: Yeah, no, that’s definitely, yeah, like a valid opinion. Like, it’s not—people just think that things on the Internet aren’t physical, so they must not be worth anything, and I’m like, that’s not true! That’s not how it works! The money is in the labor, please! But anyway, that is a separate podcast, so now we will move on to more, uh, well we’re gonna spoil all the things about THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE, so if you haven’t read THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE!, please pause and go read it, it will take you like, probably max two hours to read, it’s not very long. And again, we just said there’s like, five words on a page, and like, lots of spreads, so you know, you can get through it pretty fast. And I highly recommend you do. But for everybody else who HAS already read THAT WOLF-BOY IS MINE, we’re gonna spoil all the things. Yeah, so, again the most common feedback I got on Instagram, in particular, a couple people commented being like, “I love it, but it just wasn’t long enough!” (laughs) And I’m like, yep yep yep.
SARA: Or maybe it was just long enough?
ASHLEY: Yeah, you don’t know what kind of crazy madness it could have spun into if there were six volumes. Their teacher boy could have been like “I’m just a crazy psychopath.”
SARA: I mean there’s a little bit of that at the end?
ASHLEY: I mean, yeah, I was like, what are you about, dude? But then it tried to pull it back, it was like, he was like—you know, I just looked through, I take, you know, screen captures of certain things to remind myself before I do a podcast, I like flip through the screenshots I’ve taken of the manga—and the one was of him erasing Komugi’s memory the second time or whatever, and Yuu’s just there and he looks so tortured, he’s like “why are you doing this?!” [both laugh] And then the teacher guy’s just like, “mm, because it’s what I decided to do,” and I was like “what?!” And then they try to make him a sympathetic character in the end! And I was like, “mmmmm, no.”
SARA: Yeah, maybe we need a separate series about the trauma that he’s causing on these poor boys.
ASHLEY: I mean, truly, he is probably the most fascinating that you learn the least about in this manga. [both laugh] Uhhh, like, they’re like, “he’s 200 years old, he clearly has an agenda, he works for the government”—which, you know, always shady. [both laugh] And so I’m just like, “mmmm, nuhuh, no, what is this guy about?”
SARA: In Senri’s spinoff, he’s like, [vampire voice impersonation] “I’ll turn you into a human if you give me your life.”
ASHLEY: I know!
SARA: Like, what is this, The Little Mermaid? [both laugh]
ASHLEY: What’s going on?! And then he’s like, “oh no, I didn’t mean like literally I’d kill you, like, that’s—I’m not crazy! Come on! What?!” [both laugh] Yeah. No, Senri only gets to be, um, like, not a disposable character because of his cute side story.
SARA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: I don’t know, yeah, basically I was left with a lot of mechanical questions from all of this, though. I was like—alright, so like, Yuu is half of a wolf, and half a human, and I’m like, “is this, um, a Wolf Children situation?” Like—is the dad—can he really—how can he be half?! The dad also had to be a wolf that could shift into a human, right? So like…
SARA: Yeahhhh…
ASHLEY: I’m like, wait a minute, this math doesn’t add up!
SARA: Also like, where did the dad go? I just realized I don’t know what happened—maybe I just don’t remember, maybe that was in the manga.
ASHLEY: I think the dad died.
SARA: OK.
ASHLEY: And then the mom just didn’t know how to—but then like, yeah, he died—
SARA: And she was like, going to die too.
ASHLEY: Yeah, and it turns out she was sick, but she also just like, was like, “how do I help this poor child who can’t stop transforming randomly because he doesn’t know how to control his powers?”
SARA: “Hello, random stranger in the woods who definitely knows how to take care of children!” [both laugh]
ASHLEY: “I hear that you’ve taken another boy’s life, another cat, you’ve taken in a stray cat and made him a boy and then said ‘I’ll take your life.’ That sounds safe! Can you back my wolf boy too?” What?! I have so many questions! [laughs] And then yeah, when Senri—OK, so, yeah. So Yuu’s situation, I’m like, OK wait a minute, I’m pretty sure he has to be more like, a quarter wolf or something, you know? That’s the only way this makes sense. I don’t want to think about the bestiality otherwise, you know? [both laugh] And then with Senri, I’m like, OK, so he was just a cat before, blatantly just a cat. And then teacher turns him into a human who can transform into a cat, and I’m like, how did he learn how to speak Japanese?
SARA: Magic! The magic! The magic mountain taught him Japanese!
ASHLEY: Oh, OK, interesting, cuz I’m like, I always, you know, I wonder what I sound like—like right now, my cat is trying to sleep on his cat tree, and I’m like, don’t I annoy him? I’m just talking. And I’m like, what does it sound like to him? And it’s just probably like, noise, like it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean anything to him. So I’m like, how is Senri observing these humans, and it’s just like, going into his mind? Y’all are learning a lot about what type of reader I am. [both laugh] What is this!?
SARA: Suspension of disbelief.
ASHLEY: it’s not working.
SARA: You just have to believe in the magic mountain. The power that it gives these boys, these animals to turn into hot boys who just want to eat a lot of food.
ASHLEY: Yeah [laughs]
SARA: I like how that was their main motivation for like, living through the hell that is high school, is “I just want to eat junk food and udon.”
ASHLEY: Yeah. And like “I want to play this PlayStation Vita” or whatever Fushimi’s playing, he’s like “the entertainment! The manga! So good!” [laughs]
SARA: Obviously I want to be a human! Video games!
ASHLEY: Video games! I train this fox — this other fox — to bring me video games! It’s the best! [both laugh] And I’m like, alright, yeah, no, my suspension of disbelief was not here enough for this series clearly. But I did like — you know, again, if we’re comparing it to Fruits Basket, cuz there is this whole, “ahhh, humans turn into animals! And it’s traumatic! And it brings discord to them and they don’t know which one’s which, and it feels more like a curse” than a special gift that they have. And Yuu deals with a sense of abandonment from his family the whole time. But I did like that, you know, compared to Fruits Basket, the — because they’re supposed to be animals first, they actually feel like their animals primarily, even when they’re humans.
SARA: Yeah. [both laugh] It’s also just much more light-hearted. I feel like Fruits Basket’s like, “it was a curse!” And the whole family they had this like, tension the entire series. And Wolf-Boy’s just much more light-hearted, like “yeah, we’re animals. We’ve turned into humans.”
ASHLEY: Yeah. “You humans. So stupid.” [both laugh] “But we kind of love you anyway. We definitely love you anyway.”
SARA: I love that moment where, I can’t remember who said it, but he said, [mimic male voice] “whatever you do, don’t fall in love with me.” And I was like “mmmhmmmmm”
ASHLEY: Ha! I know, I was like, “have you never read” — I’m pretty sure it was Fushimi —
SARA: Yeah, yeah.
ASHLEY: “Have you never read a story before, Fushimi? What’s going on?”
SARA: This is like, Shojo 101.
ASHLEY: And it’s like “why don’t you tell YUU not to fall in love with KOMUGI, how about that one?” [both laugh] You know how your boy Yuu is the one hitting on her ALL THE TIME? She’s just like “I’m just a person who’s here, why are you sniffing me? What are you doing? Ya weirdo.”
SARA: and she immediately tells him how she feels. It’s like, “yessss.” I guess that was because it was only supposed to be one volume, she’s immediately like “I love you — wait, did I just say that?”
ASHLEY: “Wait a minute!” [laughs] “No, I don’t love you! But I do! But I meant, I didn’t mean to say it out loud.” Yeah, I actually think Komugi is my favorite thing about this manga. I know it’s, you know, it’s a series about hot boys who turn into cute animals, but I’m like, no, Komugi’s where it’s at, man.
SARA: Yeah, I think because this manga was published in Aria, which skews a little bit older, I think that that’s part of the reason why she is so like, she has such a low tolerance for I guess some of the shojo manga tropes. Like, she gets bullied and her response is just like, “no.”
ASHLEY: Yeah! Well, and even the reason that she’s bullied is like, a very standard shojo manga trope, where it’s like “oh, the hot boys are here! The hot boys belong to everybody!” Like the Yuki fan club in Fruits Basket.
SARA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: Like, their whole point is that no one girl can, you know, have Yuki, so that’s why they hate Tohru. But I feel like in Fruits Basket it kinda tries to like, humanize them to a point, and like utilizes them a lot more for like, gags and developing other characters. Whereas here, Komugi’s just like “no. no. this is stupid.” [both laugh]
SARA: Like, “this isn’t Boys Over Flowers, I’m ending this right here.”
ASHLEY: And I like that — you know, part of the reason she gets bullied is not even cuz she likes the hot guys that everybody is going after! You know, it’s just like, they sent around a note being like, “Ako is for everybody” — I love that I remember Ako but I can’t remember the teacher’s name, excellent. Ako! Who’s not even a character! He’s just like, a named thing with no face, I’m pretty sure!
SARA: I’m so bad with names.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: That’s what the translator’s for. That’s what I get. I get a script, and it tells me all the names.
ASHLEY: Yeah, you’re just like, “I just put it in there in places.” [both laugh] Yeah, so then, yeah, they just sent around a note that’s like, “oh, you know, Ako’s for everybody.” And she just, she doesn’t care about him at all, she just tears up the note because she’s like, “no, that’s dumb.” [laughs]
SARA: Yeah!
ASHLEY: She’s like, “let’s not spread this.”
SARA: She gets bullied just for being like, “no, this is a mean note.”
ASHLEY: Yeah! And then they’re like, “well now, now we hate you.” And they like — I love that Nogiri, apparently like, all her stories involve people who lived in Tokyo having a traumatic experience there, so they run away to Hokkaido? [both laugh] Is that like, she has to put that in every story now? As soon as she doesn’t, I’ll be like “this isn’t — what are you doing, Nogiri, you can’t, you can’t diverge from this formula!”
SARA: We’re expecting it from you!
ASHLEY: Yeah, what are you doing? Cuz that also happens in Love in Focus, so yeah, so then you know, she goes to Hokkaido and meets Yuu, and she’s like “oh no, the hot dude is dragging me down into this hell hole of nonsense I don’t want to be in!” But she’s also like “but I like him, so, fine.” No no no, she still pushes back being like, “what do you mean they’re all for everyone? All you do is stare at them from afar. You don’t even know them!” Yeah. Komugi just very quickly tears down everything, and I love her.
SARA: Yeah, she’s fantastic. And I think that was supposed to be like, one of the reasons why Yuu falls for her, is that like, that strength that she has and her like low tolerance for mean people. Because whenever they meet when they’re kids, right, the reason why he felt like he could open up to her was because he was like “oh no, I’m not supposed to tell anybody or show my ears to anybody, that’s what mom said,” and Komugi was like “then we won’t tell anybody, will we?”
ASHLEY: [imitating secretive seductive voice] “we won’t tell anybody, now will we, Yuu?” [both laugh]
SARA: “It’s just our secret!”
ASHLEY: Very, very nice, yeah. I also just like Komugi because I feel like genuinely there’s nothing — like aside from, you know, she’s like, pushes social boundaries a little bit, there’s like, nothing remarkable about her, like, she actually is just a normal girl who happened to find a wolf boy, right? Like. [both laugh]
SARA: I think that plays into what I was saying before, because like, maybe a slightly older audience for shojo might have a lower tolerance for these like kind of juvenile tropes that Komugi also has a low tolerance for. So maybe that was, like, intentional.
ASHLEY: Yeah. I also think Komugi like, looks — there’s something about her that when I visually look at her, like, she feels like she should be the mean, like, maybe — not like, the evil character, but kind of like, the mean friend or something, you know?
SARA: I get it, yeah.
ASHLEY: Yeah. Because she has like a snarky like kinda looking attitude about her, but I’m just like, “no, she’s just a normal girl who looks like, who’s on the prettier side, and that’s, that’s it! That’s Komugi!”
SARA: yeah, it’s nice that it’s not just another like, “ahh, I’m like, an ugly nerd, aw, nothing remarkable’s ever going to happen to me.”
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: Like, how many times have we seen that?
ASHLEY: Who has no angst!
SARA: Like, no, Komugi’s just a nice girl who doesn’t struggle with, I don’t know —
ASHLEY: Like, most things.
SARA: Like herself.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
SARA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: like she’s like, “okay, I’m trying to stay out of trouble, but because like, society is annoying, not because what I did is wrong.”
SARA: Mmmhmmm.
ASHLEY: And I’m like “yes, Komugi! YASSSS! OWN IT!!! Own it, girl!” I also like that she has the tick where she like, when she’s uncomfortable, she uses her one arm to like hold her other arm at her side.
SARA: I didn’t notice that.
ASHLEY: Yeah, it’s shown in at least two different panels when I was like — they’re next to each other when I was flipping through my screenshots, but they’re not contiguous panels, they’re not contiguous pages in the actual manga. So it’s —
SARA: That’s so interesting.
ASHLEY: Yeah, it’s when she was in the three-legged race with Fushimi, like, they’re standing at the start line and she’s like “ugh, I don’t want to be with Fushimi,” so she’s like, holding her arm. And then at some point when she walks away from that, like, I think she’s wearing the same outfit, so it’s like in the same scene somewhere, but she walks away from that and then that’s when the girls confront her being like, “you’re getting too close to the hot boys, you need to stop.” And she’s just like, holding her arm again, “uhhhhhhhh, stop talking to me.” [laughs]
SARA: it’s so nice when artists can like, incorporate personality that way, through body language.
ASHLEY: Yeah. So I just thought like, Komugi, like, “Aw, Komugi’s so good,” in like, very very little ways. Komugi’s definitely a weird name, right, am I making that up?
SARA: In the translation notes, it says it means “wheat.”
ASHLEY: Right, but I’m just like—
SARA: And it’s supposed to be like a joke? Oh, where was that translation note. It was because like, soba is made from wheat or something?
ASHLEY: Yeah, because her dad runs the restaurant, so she’s like, yeah.
SARA: Last night, I was watching Beastars, and I heard the word “okami,” and it was supposed to mean “wolf,” and I had this moment where I was like, “Ogami!”
ASHLEY: Yeah. He’s just named “wolf.”
SARA: Ogami is wolf! [both laugh]
ASHLEY: Yep.
SARA: Four years later, I finally get that. [both laugh] Four years!
ASHLEY: It’s something that my partner, Asher, pointed out right away, like he started reading and he was just like, “his name is just wolf! He’s the wolf and his name is wolf!” And I’m like, “I didn’t say it was subtle, like, what??” [both laugh]
SARA: Something else about his name, it’s Yû, with the macron over the u, and the font that I used was Comicrazy, from Comicraft, but that font at that time didn’t have that character, so the way that I had to make it was I had to take a hyphen and like, push it up above the u, and then push it to the right above the u —
ASHLEY: Wow
SARA: every single time!
ASHLEY: No
SARA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: I don’t like it.
SARA: Yeah, no no no, they updated the font, and that’s no longer an issue, but, that’s just like one of the things that manga letterers have to take into account whenever we’re picking fonts, because if you have to put the hyphen above every o in Ogami and every u in Yu, it’s like, you should probably just pick a different font! [both laugh]
ASHLEY: You’re like, “luckily this series is only four volumes, so it’s alright, but…”
SARA: Oh, yeah.
ASHLEY: Imagine a shonen series —
SARA: oh wait, no, Waiting for Spring, Waiting for Spring there’s also, um, I think it’s the name of the school? It’s been a while since I lettered that series, but, I think it’s the name of the school, there’s a macron over an O, and I had to put a hyphen over the O every single time, because it’s the same font!
ASHLEY: Ohhhhhh
SARA: [quietly] oh my god
ASHLEY: Yeah, I’m trying to remember the name — there’s Hojo is definitely one
SARA: Hojo, yeah!
ASHLEY: I would compare, like, if you like Waiting for Spring, you’d definitely like Nogiri’s work and vice verse, I think, for sure.
SARA: Yeah, I would agree with that. There’s definitely more of like a world and characters and it’s a more fleshed out story — I mean, it’s a lot longer, 13 volumes as compared to Wolf-Boy.
ASHLEY: Yeah, but like they have similar art styles I feel, and overall like cute feels, yeah.
SARA: Same dialogue font, too, eyyyyyy!
ASHLEY: Eyyyy! Everything is the same!
SARA: Ey, also lettered by me! It’s an easy transition!
ASHLEY: not the same author, though!
SARA: Yea.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I’m trying to think what else to talk about with Wolf-Boy, I mean, okay we didn’t get to the central conflict of like, Yuu’s abandonment and all the hypnosis techniques. I mean I did like the twist in the end, I was like, “why can’t they hypnotize her?” I’m such a gullible story person, honestly.
SARA: man, memory loss is one of those tropes that always gets me.
ASHLEY: oh yeah?
SARA: Every time when like, she gets her memory back, I’m like “oh no! She got her memory back, I’m going to start crying!”
ASHLEY: I know! “This love is destined don’t pretend otherwise!”
SARA: She overcame the magic mountain with her love!
ASHLEY: Yes, exactly! What I didn’t like about the second time is that they were like “oh yeah, our teacher erased everybody else’s memory too, and then didn’t replace their memories” so they’re like “oh no, now we live in this world where all of us remember and nobody else does!” and I’m like “oh no, that’s terrible and confusing, I don’t like it.” [laughs]
SARA: As long as they hide behind a curtain, it’s fine.
ASHLEY: [sarcastic] “as long as they hide behind a curtain, it’s fine.” yeah, that little like —
SARA: that little bonus two pages
ASHLEY: yeah, and then all of them being like, “they know that we can see them outside, right?” And Fushimi’s like, “no, don’t tell them! Let them have this moment!” [laughs] my partner actually thought I would like Fushimi the most, who is the fox, and I’m like, he’s just too obviously a tsundere for me? Like [laughs] I love Kyo from Fruits Basket, who’s obviously like, the most tsundere of tsunderes, right? But Fushimi has something about him where he’s like, you know, he’s unwilling to admit how tsundere — I guess he’s just not dere enough when he needs to be. Not enough blushies, you know? I guess we should name who our favorite of the four was. So who’s your favorite hot boy?
SARA: I’m gonna have to go with Yuu. You know, even though your name gave me a lot of problems, I love Yuu. He’s really cute.
ASHLEY: Yeahhh. I think I would also have to go with Yuu, just cuz like, Senri doesn’t leave a big impression on me until his side story, but then I’m just like, “oh it was cute and sad.”
SARA: Mmmmhmmm.
ASHLEY: Aoshi is like, why are you here, get out of here, tanuki! He did elicit the best Komugi responses. Like they had that text exchange where he was like “what are you doing this weekend?” and she was like “nothing. I’m going to stay inside. It’s winter and cold.” or whatever! I think it was New Year’s, yeah, I guess so. And he’s like “wowwww, that’s sad.” and then she’s just like “what the hell does this raccoon dog want?” [both laugh] and I was like, “this is the best!”
SARA: Yeah, he was like comedic relief, which was really cute.
ASHLEY: Then yeah, I’m like, I want to like Fushimi, but I don’t, so, yeah, Yuu is the winner, like cute generic main character boy. I have to say that wolves are larger than that.
SARA: Yeah, I was wondering that. Maybe it’s like a different species? He said he was the last one — or maybe…
ASHLEY: Yeah, he did say he was the last like, wolf in Japan. So I’m like, are Japanese wolves smaller, like everything else in Japan? Comparatively.
SARA: I love when Komugi loses her memory, and she’s just being followed by a wolf, and she’s like “mmmm, okay!”
ASHLEY: She’s like “it’s a dog!” because he’s not a full-sized wolf! Yeah! [both laugh] But yeah, after my partner read this, he was like “yeah, it just reminded me of like, Terry Pratchett wrote once — Terry Pratchett, like, big fantasy author — wrote in one of his more light-hearted fantasies being like “yeah, any wolf that is mixed with a human is just a dog.” [laughs] And I was just like “well yeah! This manga apparently proves that! She just thinks it’s a dog following her when she loses her memory!”
SARA: That’s true, yeah! [both laugh] Like, “aw, what a cute puppy!”
ASHLEY: And I’m like “nuh uh.”
SARA: Komugi, what’s wrong with you?
ASHLEY: Komugi… But yeah, I don’t know, in general I’m pretty sure the wolf would be bigger, just cuz, I did go to the wolf sanctuary that’s in New Mexico one time, which like, George RR Martin used as reference for making the dire wolves in Game of Thrones. And yeah, so you know, I got to pet some wolves, like they were, I think some of them were part dog, but they were legit wolves, and they were very large. [laughs] they were not the size of a dog, let me tell you! I was like “definitely this wolf could destroy me, I’m very small.”
SARA: I’ve been to one of those too, and it’s kind of scary, because they do kind of look like dogs, but they’re much bigger
ASHLEY: They’re just bigger, yeah.
SARA: And there was like a handler who was telling us about them, and she went in the cage with — I think only one of them was full wolf, and it started showing dominant behaviors to her.
ASHLEY: oh no
SARA: And it was so scary! Like all of a sudden it turned from like, dog-like behavior to wolf behavior. Scary.
ASHLEY: Yeah, when I went it was like, we got to pet a lot of different ones, and you know, they all had unique personalities, and I was like “oh yeah, okay, animals are awesome and have feelings and stuff, you know, they develop personalities,” but you know, one of them, she was like “this one’s older, so try to actually kneel down so that the wolf doesn’t feel the need to jump on you, cuz she gets very excited even though she has arthritis.”
SARA: Awwww!
ASHLEY: And I was like “oh boy, alright, cool.”
SARA: What a good doggy!
ASHLEY: I know, what a good, good wild doggy! [both laugh] Oh boy. Yeah. I don’t know, I feel like in general this series, yeah it could definitely have a spin-off manga about their teacher, and I’d be like, “okay.” So these are the only two — like Love in Focus and That Wolf-Boy is Mine! — are the only two Nogiri series —
SARA: That are out in North America
ASHLEY: That are out in English.
SARA: There’s another one in Japan that I really hope that — Kodansha Comics, please license their new series so that I can letter it, thank you. [both laugh]
ASHLEY: Yes! Is it completed, or is it ongoing?
SARA: I think it just completed, so I’m like, “please please please please!”
ASHLEY: It’s ripe time!
SARA: Give to me! Give it!
ASHLEY: Give to me! Give to me so I can have the cute feels!
SARA: I have to keep my pulse on releases in Japan and the US because whenever there’s something I really want to letter, that somebody releases, that they announce in the US, I’m like “can I have it, please?”
ASHLEY: Oh yeah, interesting.
SARA: “Please give to me.”
ASHLEY: What is the process of…?
SARA: I just email my editor and I’m like “please give?” [Ashley laughs]
ASHLEY: Wow, okay, so it’s just a competition to see like, who emails me first?!?! [both laugh]
SARA: Well I mean, an editor, part of their job is to pick out translators and letterers that would do a good job on each series, so they might have worked with — like, Haruko had worked with me on Wolf-Boy, so whenever they got Love in Focus, she was like, “oh, well Sara did really good on Wolf-Boy, so let’s see if she’s open for Love in Focus.” So yeah, you know, if you just give your editor an extra nudge, like, “hey I want to work on this,” they’ll be like, “hmmm, I’ll consider it.” I mean, somebody wanting to work on a series is definitely a good reason to put them on it.
ASHLEY: Yeah. But I think that’s all I had to discuss about Wolf-Boy, is there anything that I missed that you wanted to bring up?
SARA: I’m happy I got to revisit this series, it’s been four years. It was a little bit hard to re-read something I lettered four years ago.
ASHLEY: Oh, yeah? Yeah?
SARA: Ugh. Here’s a free pro tip: If you’re going to reread something you did four years ago, read it like you’re reading one of your friend’s series, like, if you see a mistake, it’s fine! They were trying their best! [laughs]
ASHLEY: Did you see mistakes and you were like “I could do this better now!”
SARA: Absolutely, yeah. My retouch on this series was not great, but, hey, I am doing real good now.
ASHLEY: You’re like, “and now I don’t have to put the silly macron over this manually in this font.”
SARA: I learned so many things in Wolf-Boy. I learned so many things.
ASHLEY: Thanks for listening to Shojo & Tell. Comments, questions, constructive criticism, concerns? Need to gush about why you love Nogiri’s work? Email shojoandtell@gmail.com, or leave a comment on the episode’s YouTube page. We’re at Shojo & Tell on Twitter, why did I have Facebook on this one? Tumblr, and Instagram. I mean, you can look at Facebook if you want, but… Sara, where can people find you and your work on the Internet?
SARA: You can find me on Twitter @salinsly and my website is www.sara.pizza. I have to say the “www” because people don’t believe that pizza is a real TLD, but it is!
ASHLEY: wow, you—
SARA: Just like .com, but it’s .pizza
ASHLEY: [laughs] you’re living the life right there, right?
SARA: Yeah, I had to scoop that one up.
ASHLEY: Yeah. I definitely recommend people follow you for your short little videos about what lettering is like. I’m — again, since I like, I work at a tech company but it’s also like a publishing company too, hybrid, so I’m like, oh, I always love listening to like, or following people who teach me stuff about niches of publishing that I don’t really interact with. That’s cool.
SARA: Yeah, thanks. It’s great to hear that kind of feedback. I mean, that’s why I post all this stuff, cuz people don’t really know what lettering is, so I’m like, “well, why I don’t I tell them?”
ASHLEY: Yeah, I think it’s really helpful too, for anybody who — cuz I was always like, “I want to work in publishing!” and then I didn’t know like, 95% of what goes into publishing, you know? It’s helpful for people to know the different roles that they could go into.
SARA: Right, yeah.
ASHLEY: Yeah. Are you excited every time you see a new episode from us? If so, please consider leaving a rating on Apple Podcasts. This will help the podcast reach more hearts, or at least ears. Thanks again for listening. We’ll be back next time for Beast Master by Kyosuke Motomi, and that will be with Asher. So stay tuned until then, bye.
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